Bata SA MD Michael Wyatt...Staying focused on core business.
Pandemic has helped us take market share from importers
Published: 19th May 2021
Q&A with Michael Wyatt, MD Bata SA
How happy or otherwise is your business with the NRCS? Do you have numbers for all your styles? What are the problems, for safety footwear suppliers, with what the NRCS is doing?
Bata has a good relationship with NRCS. However, South Africa would benefit from speeding up the turnaround time of new articles which would help local companies develop better collections faster.
What have been the effects of the pandemic on your safety footwear business?
The effect of the pandemic has been good for Bata Industrials. We began manufacturing early last year as an essential service provider and it allowed us to luckily overachieve vs. plans. We don’t import any safety footwear. All of our current safety shoes and gumboots are made at the Bata factory in KZN.
How well has the safety footwear market held up over the past 18 months? Are there any noticeable changes in the quantities your customers are buying, in the price points that they're buying, or in the end customers that they're supplying?
Overall buying quantities are up with our key customers over the last 18 months, mainly due to taking market share from import brands who were left exposed during the Covid-19 pandemic. In South Africa, considering the economy, keen prices are always a focus for our customers so we stay focused on our core categories and business.
Are you exporting safety footwear? If so, where to, and to what sort of end customers?
Yes, we have been exporting safety footwear for over a decade to our distributors in SADC as well as our own Bata sister companies and franchises in Africa.
You do both leather and gumboots. Are your experiences different for these two categories?
Both have had their fair share of issues relating to short supply of raw material supply, so neither category is a clear winner. If anything I would say leather came out slightly ahead as it was not impacted by PVC resin short supply.
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